


Meant to Be, But Was Not

by TrueMyth



Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark, Drug Use, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Infidelity, Murder, New Year's Eve, Noir af, Rape, Sex, Suicide, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 21:47:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4453577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrueMyth/pseuds/TrueMyth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All ficlets take place on different New Year's Eves in the future.</p>
<p>This is DARK fic. Includes character death, rape, violence, drugs, sex, language, and angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meant to Be, But Was Not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fickledame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fickledame/gifts).



> Written during season two, so some sections are clearly AU due to canon divergence. Thank God, or else no one would be happy, ever.
> 
> This was written for fickledame, who wanted dark and angsty with Logan/Veronica. I challenge you to find anything remotely fluffy about this collection of ficlets. My alpha beta is ladydisdain225. My delta beta is shizam23. And my gamma beta is mutinousmuse. Any errors are all mine or fickledame’s if she want ‘em.

**Love was meant to be kind, but was cruel.**

It was like the time she’d gone diving off the coast of La Jolla with some friends, Gia thought. A pressure like smooth silk pressed her into a yielding softness; her actions were delayed and labored, and the world that greeted her opening eyes was one of muted colors, distant shapes, and indefinable movements.

Something was happening to her.

Gia tried to lift her head but it felt as if it weighed more than a bowling ball. Her feet were like cement blocks and her hands refused to move at all, lying uselessly on a supple surface. She wanted to call out for help, but the words lodged in her throat and she began to fear.

Then her hand moved.

Someone had picked it up and pulled it through the heavy air into her field of vision. It looked like her hand, the well manicured nails and her grandmother’s ring, yet she felt disconnected as she watched it flop from the wrist over her mid-section. The hand fell again, to her side, and she heard a chuckle echo through the air to reach her ears and compete with the dull rush of blood that was demanding the majority of her hearing.

Her world rocked as someone climbed onto the waterbed next to her.

Gia’s body rolled helplessly into the column of a muscular thigh and a familiar face swam into view. His pale blue eyes surveyed her inert form and she felt the joy of his smile resonate along her spine. Dick was here now. He would help her, save her.

But what was he doing?

Although most of her senses were numb, she felt the rasping brush of the pads of his fingertips along the inner sweep of her thigh. Dick raised the hem of her party dress as he continued to grin, never taking his eyes from her rapidly exposed flesh.

The bed shook again as he moved between her legs and the bile rose up her throat. She tasted the bitter acid at the back of her mouth and worked to gasp, move, scream, kick, fight, anything. She managed only to close her eyes for a moment.

But she could still hear the rustle and snaps down the bed. Still feel the grasping of hands at her hips, biting into her skin as they maneuvered her into position.

Her eyes flew open again when he touched her. Black and white and blue, the world was stark and unforgiving and it refused to change.

Why had no one warned her?

In the distance, beyond the closed door of the guest room, she could hear their friends counting down to the New Year while Dick leaned over her and surged in.

The friction was a white-hot knife driving straight for her core and the pain and the motion finally managed to force a flow of air across her vocal cords. She groaned, a ragged noise, but loud in the eerie quiet of the room.

Dick looked up to the glittering anguish of her gaze and frowned.

He pressed in again, and her body finally called forth some form of moisture. The world turned to rainbow glimmers as the light of the bedside table fractured into a million colors in the tears between her lashes. Gia felt the haze of darkness gather again and willed herself to make another sound, something that would bring help running.

But the last thing she saw before she slid beneath the inky surface of unconsciousness was Dick’s satisfied grin. 

 

**Love was meant to last forever, but was forgetful.**

Congressman Duncan Kane sighed as he listened to the last of his interns hustling out the exterior office door, full of merriment and on their way to countless other New Year’s Eve parties, too wild for him to attend without blowing his chances at holding further public office. He rubbed the grit from his eyes and reached for the final pile in his To-Do box. A note in the meticulous hand of his secretary explained that these were thank you cards and last minute holiday notes that were too important to have the final signature forged or inked on with a rubber stamp. There were only twenty small rectangles of ambiguously PC seasonal cheer to work through, and Duncan pressed his thin lips together as he uncapped his fountain pen and got to work.

In his mind, he was already out the door, in the back of his limo, and up the steps of his elegant townhouse. Melinda was meeting him at the door with smiles and rosy cheeks. The pearl necklace was luminous against the alabaster of her skin and her silky blonde hair was smooth and flawlessly coifed. She would be holding a spring of mistletoe in her hand and her lips would slide slightly to the side in good humor as they shared a chaste kiss on the stoop for the benefit of any bored camera man unlucky enough to draw stalking duty on the holiday. For his own benefit, Duncan would let his hand drop to cup, momentarily, at the swell of her backside, hidden from view of the street and therefore a perfectly acceptable greeting for his new wife.

Duncan held himself back from simply scrawling his name across the heavy card stock. He tugged at the suddenly too-tight material of his pants leg. He no longer noticed who the cards were for, falling back on generic platitudes as he imagined the dinner Melinda would have prepared for him, the way she’d laugh at his stories, her eyes sparkling with that light which was for him alone. She would whisper a reminder that they had given the servants the night off as she grabbed hold of his hand and pulled him into the parlor.

He signed one-handedly now, half way through the stack, as he imagined her lithe frame silhouetted before the crackling fire of the yule log. She would tease him, as she always did – his little minx – peeling off layers of cashmere and silk as he reclined in his favorite chair. When he could withstand no more, he would fall on her, bearing her down to the carpet as she laughed with a music like tinkling bells. Soon, she would wear a different sort of pearl necklace and his cry of triumph would send him into the blessed new year.

Family was a wonderful thing, Duncan thought as he painstakingly inked a polite “ _Best wishes in the year to come. With affection, Duncan Kane_ ” and tossed the final card into the outgoing box as he rushed from his office suite.

The conditioned air swirled across the address label for an exclusive, all-girl boarding school in up-state New York. 

 

**Love was meant to be a fairytale, but was harsh reality.**

The money had finally run out. It was surprising, really, how quickly one could go through fifty thousand dollars when one was a drunk, and a fuck-up, and hiding from everyone you loved. Lianne Mars was all three of those things, so, who knows, maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised at all that she found herself on a hotel bed in Aspen on New Years Eve. The actual place was completely new to her, but facts were facts and she’d been here before. The scratchy sheets, the blurred vision, the sweat still drying on her skin as she watched him roll out of bed and pad to the door of the tiny bathroom.

She had promised herself after the last time that she would not end up here again. That she finally had the means to re-write her story: get clean, get sober, and be the mother that Veronica deserved and the woman that her high school year book had proclaimed her to be. _Most Likely to Succeed_. What a fucking joke. Lianne’s eyes traced the hairline crack in the yellowed ceiling above and grimaced an approximation of humorous appreciation at the irony of life around her Virgina Slim.

She listened as he ran the shower. She imagined him running the soap between his hands, building the lather of fine bubbles and slick, sanitary slime that would wash his indiscretion from his body. Lianne always knew where to find him. He made sure of it, even when he told his wife again and again that they were over, history. He couldn’t resist the chance to be her knight in shining armor with a chest of shining talismans in the form of cold, hard cash, to free her from the horrors of her life. He was never one to pass up the chance to make use of his lance either.

Lianne ground her cigarette butt into the crystal ashtray, as her eyes fell on the trail of clothes marking the path from door to bed like bread crumbs in a twisted fairy story. He would work his way backwards, pulling on undergarments and then pants, socks, buckle his belt… When he reached the door again, he’d be home-free, dressed in his tux and ready to return to Celeste at wherever the rich and self-satisfied thronged to ring in the new year.

Abandoning her once more to the dragons of doubt and the villainous call of the vodka.

She opened the bedside table and pulled out the item she’s spent the last of Veronica’s college fund on. Lianne blinked back tears as she struggled against the memories of the pleasure Jake had brought her. He had been so handsome in high school. All the girls had wanted him and he had wanted only her. The evil witch had ensnared him, but his heart had remained hers, even while she tried to make her happy ending elsewhere. Life’s joke, again, was that there was no happy ending without him. In his arms, she was complete. She needed nothing to dull the pain, for there was no pain. She rejoiced in every moment of bliss she could give to him and memorized the appearance of his face in that golden moment of delight. But he was always gone in the morning, like dew on grass, and she was left a hollow husk of herself. Lianne hated him for what she was without him. She clung to the hate, and dashed the tears from her eyes as she worked.

When he opened the bathroom door, and stood clean and unsullied to face her as she sat on the edge of the rumpled bed in her too-tight teddy with its broken strap, she was ready for him.

Lianne raised her arms without shaking and fired twice – bull’s-fucking-eye – straight into her beloved’s chest. She felt the baptismal wash of Jake’s hot blood spattering on her face for the full three seconds that it took to turn the gun in her hands and pull the trigger a final time. 

 

**Love was meant to be valued above riches, but was greedy.**

Cassidy heard the slamming of car doors echoing up the drive and felt his world shift with a sudden finality. He gripped the armrest of his chair and remembered that time, many years ago, when his father had finally looked at him, as if really seeing him for the first time, and then, with an ‘Oh son,’ he had run, only minutes ahead of the FEC. And now Cassidy would follow in his footsteps one last time. But there was no helicopter on the roof.

Mac took in his suddenly tense expression and darting eyes and set her champagne stem on the side table before kneeling at his feet. The other guests continued their chatter obliviously.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” She tried to coax a smile from him, “Too much bubbly?”

Cassidy looked into the face of his wife of three years. Her hair was nearly its natural shade, with only a few professionally applied highlights bringing luster to the warm brown. She was the most beautiful woman in the world to him now. She had always believed in him. In the eight years they had been together, he’d never once regretted asking her to the senior prom after finally getting up his nerve. She had been the best life companion he could have asked for, helping him to raise Phoenix Landtrust to levels never reached by Casablancas Inc. Oh yes, he had outdone his father. His Swiss bank account was ten times Dick Senior’s now. Pity Cassidy had always lacked foresight. That had been Mac’s strength, and he had leaned on her as much as he could without drawing her into the web of under-the-table dealings and back-scratching.

He ran the back of his fingers across the arch of her cheekbone and forced his lips in the semblance of a smile.

“I’m so sorry, Mac,” he croaked out as her eyes narrowed in confusion and worry.

A pounding at the front door finally slowed the gay prattle of their friends and Cassidy reached for her hands, holding them so tightly, he feared the bones might pop, but she was his life line. Only two dark shapes appeared behind their befuddled maid, but they were the size of linebackers, and Cassidy was already resigned to his fate. He stood to greet them, bringing Mac to her feet at the same time.

The flash of badges set off a babbling waterfall of commentary from the gathered guests, but Cassidy was aware only of the stiffening of Mac’s body besides him. She pulled away, disengaged their hands and stared at him as if willing him to deny the accusations.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. It was just small things at first and then… it got away from me and…”

She had turned from him, seconds after he saw the sheen of moisture in her eyes. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort the hurt, was reaching out his hands to do so when she hurtled a crystal vase at the floor between them.

“Get out!”

The crystal fragments were the shattered remains of her love and trust and he heard them crunch underfoot as he was flanked by the two agents and escorted from the building.

Mac had followed behind him and one of the agents held back. He pulled an envelope from the dark fabric of his suit and pressed it into the palm of her hand.

“You country is deeply appreciative of your help in this matter, Mrs. Mackenzie.” He put a casual finger to his nose as he strode out into the night.

Mac entered a lonely office and dug out a letter opener from a small drawer. She counted the rows of zeros marking across the long, rectangular piece of paper and she smiled softly as the clock struck midnight. 

 

**Love was meant to be free, but was more costly than that.**

One pill, two pill, red pill, blue pill.

Jackie fanned the array across the small white tray in the back room of the hippest club in Los Angeles. She selected a large white pill, the size of a horse tranquilizer, and placed it between her painted lips as she felt the gaze of her new best friend following her movements. She smiled at the dark man – Raoul? Ralph? Richie? – and chased the pill with the dredges of her cocktail. She winked at Ronald and shuddered as the chemicals poured down her throat.

“Have I impressed you with my gag reflex?”

He didn’t try to hide his crude self-caress as he watched her twist in the small leather chair. He ordered her a fresh drink.

“Have some more, babe. Try the little pink ones, they’ll make you feel _gooood_ …”

“And then I make you feel good? Right? Fuck you, Re-whatever-the-hell-your-name-is.” She shuddered as the effects of the pill unfurled in her belly. The tips of her fingers began to tingle and she let her head fall back against the supple black of the chair back. “Or maybe that’s exactly what I’ll do… God this stuff is good.” She felt her mind begin to drift, her nerves alive with fire, the sad truths of her life reaching a level of a half-recalled good joke.

She laughed at herself as she floated on the ceiling of the small room and watched the pretty black girl with the daddy complex crawl across the floor, falling out of her tight dress, moving to the lap of Ricardo and tugging at his fly. She howled with humor as the pathetic thing washed down his aftertaste with booze. He fed her two perfect pills of pink paradise and took one for himself.

Jackie’s mind followed after Randolf and the sad girl, into the back alley and towards a waiting car. She remembered the flashbulbs and questions and the cruel stares as they decried Terrance Cook for his illegal betting and his game rigging and his out-of-control daughter. Where had the tip to the tabloids come from? Why had it taken so long to happen? The thin, girl-shaped thing that was herself tugged on Reggie’s arm and rubbed against him and begged for oblivion. His mouth found hers, teeth cutting her lips as he pressed her up against the wall of the building and plunged into her. The cutting of the exposed brick at her back made the voices go away and she enjoyed critiquing his skill and style silently as the night air chilled the places where his hot mouth had been. The final verbal assessment earned her a slap across the face and they both laughed.

When he was done, they drove to his loft and did it again. He flipped on the TV, muted the noise, and pulled out a battered metal box. The rubber cording was tight against her thigh as she lay on the bed and watched him cook the smack and suck it carefully into a clean needle. Liquid euphoria flowed through her veins and she didn’t complain as he turned her over and tucked a pillow under her hips. She watched the confetti rain down on the crowds of New York, three hours ago, LIVE, and blessed the numbness as he stretched her from behind.

In the morning, Jackie was sore all over. She couldn’t sit down without moaning out loud, couldn’t walk to the bathroom to wash her face and she wanted to spit at on Roger’s bronze back where it lay exposed between dirty sheets. She tugged at the metal box and found a container of pills. They didn’t look as pretty in the light of day, but they were as dear to her as life and she ran her fingers lovingly through the small chunks of pharmaceutical bliss. She took one of each, until she held a rainbow in her hands and reached for the stale glass of water on the nightstand. By the time she was halfway through the greens, she was having trouble keeping her eyes open, but she still managed to bring her fingers to her mouth, still managed to swallow.

Jackie didn’t have the tears to cry as the pain flew away. She watched herself from further away this time, as the hand fell off the bed and the purple pills dropped and rolled away. She drifted higher and finally forgot who that girl was as she moved through the roof, into the clouds, and away.

Free. 

 

**Love was meant to be a pleasant salve, but was sharp and cutting.**

“May I cut in?” Veronica grinned at Wallace, though her smile dimmed slightly as she watched Pamela be claimed by her father for the second round of the first dance. She wondered vaguely that she always felt such dislike for Wallace’s girlfriends. Maybe she simply never felt they were worthy of him. She had stopped complaining about them in high school, feigning friendship with the girls so as to not upset Wallace. She found genuine good humor as she returned her gaze to Wallace’s smiling face and they began to dance.

“Wallace Fennel, married man. How does it feel?”

“Pretty damn good, so far!”

Veronica leaned in to impart a grave secret, “I hear, as soon as you pass the two hour mark, the rest? Is cake.” They shared a chuckle as more people joined them on the dance floor. She rested her head lightly on Wallace’s shoulder and watched though the crowd as Alicia approached her father from behind. Veronica drew a sharp breath and angled Wallace away from the impending fireworks, asked him why he had decided to get married on New Year’s Eve and pretended to listen to the answer as she observed the couple at the edge of the dance floor over his shoulder.

Keith’s whole demeanor changed when she touched his back, as if he knew her touch from any of the other two hundred party guests. Alicia gestured to the floor and Keith’s head jerked sharply in a negative. His lips barely moved as he uttered something which caused Alicia’s face to grow ashen. And then Alicia was dancing with her new boyfriend and Keith was chatting to a neighbor by the bar and everything was peaceful again. Wallace hadn’t noticed and Veronica laughed again as he twirled them across the dance floor.

Until the room stopped spinning in a kaleidoscope of colors and lights and she saw him. Through the press of bodies, at the end of the dance floor, looking better in a tux than any man had a right to, Logan Echolls watched her calmly as the smile faded from her face and her eyes flew wide with surprise. And then he began to move towards her.

He didn’t weave around the couples; they parted for him like courtiers before returning to their merriment. In ten seconds, he was at her side where she and Wallace stood, a small island of stillness in a sea of swirling evening wear and laughter.

“May I cut in?” He did not remove his eyes from Veronica’s face. Wallace shifted his feet and gathered breath to deliver a set-down as he moved to step between them, break the eye contact, send him away from her again. Who knew when she would see him again?

“Yes.” The syllable was crisp and desperate as she placed one restraining white hand against the black of Wallace’s jacket and slid the other home, into the warm, dry grasp of Logan’s waiting hand. “Yes,” she breathed again, trying to reassure Wallace as Logan slid an arm around her waist and the crowd closed around them.

The live band played on, the song extended to allow multiple partners to claim a dance with the happy couple. The music faded from hearing as Veronica stared at his face, slowly mapped the slight changes that five years had wrought.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed, then frowned at the hard edge of her voice.

“Is that any way to greet a long, lost friend, Veronica?” His thumb, where it rested on hers made a sudden, but sweet movement, gliding across the surface of the delicate web between her thumb and palm. It was the same movement which had begun that seduction, five years past, and her body had not forgotten as a shudder ran the length of her spine and she bit down on the inside flesh of her bottom lip. His name was a series of shattered sounds dropping from the corner of her mouth and he pulled her closer to him with his left arm, even as she saw the surprise flicker in the dark depths of his gaze.

“You do remember,” he whispered.

Just as she intoned, “Stop it.”

Logan’s body stiffened against her and the hand at her back tightened as he glared down at her.

She insisted, “It was a long time ago. Leave it be. Where have you been?”

But Logan didn’t answer her question. Instead he pushed her away from him and twirled her until her head spun before pulling her back, flush against him. He bent and blew a column of hot air across the curve of her neck, where the shell of her ear and the arch of her jaw bone met. Another shudder traveled the length of her body and she fisted the fine fabric of his lapel as the remembered sensations washed over her.

The end of senior year, the last time she had visited the presidential suite at the Neptune Grand for a reason she had never admitted to herself. Logan’s hand on her hand, sliding down her bare arms, over her back, under her shirt. Veronica had never forgotten the moist heat of his mouth as it had closed on her neck, on her breast, on the soft flesh of her inner thigh. She remembered the small mewling noises she had made as she left a trail of small kisses down the curve of his side. She had felt so many sensations that night that she had been sure her senses had been overwhelmed, that the pleasure would wash from her mind all the exacting details and leave only the pleasant glow she was used to feeling with Duncan. But she had never compared them again, after that night. Logan was fire and heat and sharp delight, so intense it was as pain. No, she had never forgotten. His body had seared her memory like a brand and she’d been forever changed.

And so, as he maneuvered them around the dance floor, pressed and caressed her with his fingers and the length of his legs, she wanted to cry out at the assault of familiarity.

The sight of him the following day, at graduation, was too much after she had left him, without a word in the company of the early morning light. She had turned when he approached and he had stayed away. She hadn’t realized he was leaving Neptune that day. Hadn’t realized that by giving that small social cut, she was slicing her own heart in the process.

The song ended and a faster pace was set. They stood at the edge of the dance floor. His breathing was slow and labored, hers an intense hitching in her chest.

“Why are you here?” Her desperation made the question climb in octave to end on a shrill note of despair.

Logan surveyed her tense frame, fisting hands, clenched jaw and she saw some form of realization dawn across his features.

“Don’t worry,” his words crackled in the festive air, “it wasn’t for you. I didn’t even get the memo that you were involved with this little shindig.”

“Then who –”

“Logan! You made it. You simply have to dance with me, naughty boy!” Pamela was already tugging on Logan’s arm before she saw Veronica standing by with mouth agape.

“Veronica,” Pamela acknowledged. “I didn’t realize you two knew each other?” She made it a question of impossibility with the slight sneer she sent towards Veronica.

“Oh, Pam, I’m as surprised as you to find that I knew someone here. You told me I wouldn’t know any of your husband’s friends.” Logan tossed his head as he laughed and put on a show and Veronica marveled at the way Pamela seemed to eat it up with a spoon.

“Well, I didn’t think they were quite your circle, Logan,” she sparkled up at him, angling her shoulders to all but exclude Veronica from the conversation. “How do you know each other?”

“Just from auld lang syne, you know, ‘tis the season.” Logan’s left eye twitched over Pamela’s shoulder as she smirked at Logan and, crooking her finger, and pulled him onto the floor.

“And how do you two know –”

Veronica’s unfinished question was answered when she saw Pamela’s hand dip, for a split second, to brush the firm curve of Logan’s ass before they were swallowed by the dancing throng.

**Author's Note:**

> I have it on the authority of my fluff-loving betas that you shouldn't worry about Logan and Veronica because they end up making-out in the coat-check closet, falling through the jackets, landing in Narnia, and are now ruling as King and Queen after meeting Mr. Tumnas.
> 
> ... At least that's what they tell themselves.
> 
> I am slowly transferring some of my fanfiction over from the old LiveJournal account. If you care to find me now, Tumblr is the best place for that. Same bat username, same bat channel.


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